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Copyright by Jess O’Rear 2016 The Thesis Committee for Jess O’Rear Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: The Spectacle of Transformation: (Re)Presenting Transgender Experience Through Performance APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Laura Gutiérrez Rebecca Rossen The Spectacle of Transformation: (Re)Presenting Transgender Experience Through Performance by Jess O’Rear, BA Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Acknowledgements The incredible community I’ve found at UT is one of a kind and deserves so much of the credit for what this thesis has turned out to be. First and foremost, I want to extend my gratitude and appreciation for Dr. Laura Gutiérrez for her invaluable feedback and attention during this process. Many thanks to Sam Blake, Gabby Randle, Veronica Rivera-Negron, and Agatha Oliveira for being the most inspiring cohort anyone could ever have. I am also infinitely grateful to the faculty and staff who have given their time and energy to my work. Thank you to Rebecca Rossen, Megan Alrutz, Kristen Hogan, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Charlotte Canning, and Paul Bonin-Rodriguez. This thesis owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude to the faculty of Saint Mary’s College of Maryland: Dr. Joanne Klein, who is responsible for the first iteration of this project in 2009; as well as Dr. Mark Rhoda, Dr. Beth Charlebois, Dr. Jennifer Cognard- Black, and the illustrious Leon Wiebers. These incredible scholar/artists helped a scatterbrained but passionate undergraduate find their way in academia, and I am forever grateful to them for their guidance and support. I could not have made it through this process without the brilliant mind and stalwart support of my amazing partner (in life, in love, and in crime), Jana Fronczek. “Thank you” is simply inadequate. Perhaps “I love you” and “I owe you big time” will suffice, for now. Finally, thank you to my parents for continuing to love and support me in everything that I do. You are the embodiment of what a family should be, and I am so blessed to have the privilege of being your child. iv Abstract The Spectacle of Transformation: (Re)Presenting Transgender Experience Through Performance Jess O’Rear, MA The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Laura Gutiérrez In December 2015, when The Public Theater cast two cisgender actors in the leading roles of a musical based on the true story of two transgender individuals and their fight against transphobia in the United States, performance makers from across the country spoke out against the casting decision. This outrage joins a chorus of transgender people and allies speaking out against a continuously growing film, television, and theatrical archive of performance which focuses on transgender characters without centering actual transgender people. While media attention on transgender individuals in the United States might be at an all-time high, when it comes to representing transgender experiences in performance, transgender-identified characters are repeatedly performed by cisgender actors whose gender identities do not match that of their character. This thesis argues that these casting choices and the critical praise that these performances (termed “cross-gender performances” by the author) garner reinforce cissexist and heteronormative ideology wherein biological sex and gender identity are v inextricably linked. Therefore, self-determined gender identity is invalidated and the lives of transgender individuals are devalued in favor of valorizing the “spectacle of transformation” that the cisgender actor undergoes in preparation for the role. This thesis tracks the legacy of these “cross-gender performances” across U.S. film and stage history in order to demonstrate how critical responses to these performances shift attention away from the transgender character and onto the body of the cisgender actor. After tracing this legacy from the late 19th century theatrical stage and late 20th century Hollywood to early 21st-century Broadway, this thesis arrives at the work two contemporary transgender performance artists, Sean Dorsey and Annie Danger, in order to demonstrate how transgender stories told by transgender performers refutes, reclaims, and repurposes the harmful tropes and stereotypes perpetuated by performances helmed by cisgender directors and producers with cisgender actors for mostly cisgender audiences. Finally, this thesis imagines the revolutionary and liberatory possibilities of finding joy through queer and transgender bodies and experiences, ultimately asserting the value of these lives through their celebratory presence in performance. vi Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................................... 1 The Boulder We Roll .................................................................................. 1 The Spectacle of Transformation ................................................................ 5 Normalizing Narratives ............................................................................. 19 The Transformation of the Spectacle ......................................................... 25 Chapter Two: Threads of a Legacy .................................................................... 30 Whose Fuss Is It Anyway?........................................................................ 30 A Questionable (Un)Sexing ...................................................................... 39 The Empress’s New Clothes ..................................................................... 42 An Essential (Dis)Belief ........................................................................... 55 Chapter Three: Reflections of Greater Possibilities ............................................ 69 The Gift of a Present Presence .................................................................. 69 The Mirror in/of the Archive ..................................................................... 74 Cry Until You Laugh ................................................................................ 87 Our Erotic (R)Evolution ..........................................................................100 Bibliography ....................................................................................................103 vii Chapter One: Introduction THE BOULDER WE ROLL Within the first week of March 2016, two different UT Austin faculty members familiar with my research sent me separate emails related to Southern Comfort, an (at the time) upcoming production at The Public Theater which focuses on the real-life experiences of two transgender people in the rural south of the United States. One email asked if I had heard about the production with a link to its official page on PublicTheater.org, and wondered whether or not there were any trans people cast in the show (which was also my immediate thought as soon as I read “play about a group of transgender friends” in the subject line). The other message asked if I was going to watch the livestream of The Public Theater’s open forum on “Gender Identity, Representation, and Theatre” that evening. I was grateful for both emails, as I had not known about either of the events mentioned before I received their messages. What I also did not know at the time was that the two events were inextricably tied to one another and, subsequently, the crux of my research into the discursive consequences of cisgender actors’ performances of transgender characters.1 On November 5th, 2015, The Public Theater in New York City released a casting call for “actors and singers who identify as transgender” to perform in an upcoming production entitled Southern Comfort, described as “a folk and bluegrass-inspired 1 A note on vocabulary: Though I will define the terms I choose to use later in this paper, I want to acknowledge that many of the texts with which I engage use a variety of different terminology to indicate things like transgender, cisgender, gender nonconforming, etc. In direct quotations, I will use the terminology that is used in the source text, so as not to retroactively apply labels to ideas that would be anachronistic. When describing individuals, I will use the terminology that they use for themselves, even if it is outdated or, in a contemporary context, considered offensive, out of respect for their self-identification. 1 musical that explores transgender life” (Playbill). A little more than a month later, the theater published the official casting announcement for the production, which revealed a cast and crew made up entirely of cisgender people, save for two supporting roles. Annette Bening, a cisgender female actress, was cast as the lead character, a transgender man named Robert Eads; the role of Lola Cola, a transgender woman and the other lead character, was given to cisgender male actor Jeff McCarthy. Two days after the casting announcement, genderqueer theater artist Taylor Edelhart penned an open letter to The Public in response and circulated the letter for electronic signatures. In just one week, the letter gained over 200 signatures, including that of Taylor Mac, a trans-identified performance artist who frequently presents and stars in performances on The Public’s stages. In their letter, Edelhart poses a series of questions which they explicitly state are not meant to be rhetorical. “The past
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